Forums:How did WW1 impact Tolkien's representation of good and evil?

Hi! For my A Levels I'm doing an EPQ on the impact of WW1 on Tolkien's representation of good and evil and I was looking for some primary research. So, any insight or opinions would be great. Please let me know your name if you want to be credited or just say you want to remain anonymous. Thanks! :) —Unsigned comment by Tharian (talk • contribs).

Hi, not sure if you know of it already but Tolkien and the Great War by John Garth will be a helpful source. It discusses more generally his time in the war and also how that influenced his writings but you should be able to get some information specifically about good and evil out of it and generally a better insight into how WWI affected him and his writings. Good and Evil in The Lord of the Rings by W.H. Auden discusses good and evil (obviously, as the title suggests) including war in his writings. It doesn't have much direct analysis of how specifically WWI affected Tolkien but it is an interesting analysis of good and evil, especially from someone who knew him quite well. We have a page with a timeline of of Tolkien and WWI: World War I.

Also as a complete non-scholar I will add that many view Tolkien's writings as very black and white in terms of good and evil which I do have to slightly (though not entirely) disagree with. I think characters such as Saruman (Maiar who gets corrupted), men such as the Easterlings and Haradrim who are pardoned by Aragorn after the War of the Ring and of course Frodo Baggings who at the end couldn't force himself to destroy the ring show that Tolkien didn't write just straight forward morally uncomplicated characters and I think often the characterizations of his stories as such are oversimplification. In my view the biggest way that WWI influenced Tolkien's representations of good and evil is by making him suspicious of power and those who seek to gain it.

That being said, I do agree that WWI influenced good and evil in his stories but (again in my entirely unprofessional opinion) I almost see the mostly good vs evil in Tolkien's stories as him writing the opposite of his own experiences. Tolkien's stories are often viewed as escapist (more here if you're interested) and I think this may have been partly that. We know that Tolkien didn't generally have a black and white view of wars. For example, while he was strongly against Hitler and Nazism (See for example letters 29 & 30), he also didn't view Germany or Germans as all evil (Letter 45) and questioned some of Britain's role in the war such as anti-german propaganda (Also mentioned in Letter 45) and Britain's nuclear arsenal (Letter 52) Essentially after having fought in WWI, including terrible battles like the Battle of the Somme, I think it was nice for Tolkien to be able to create a world in which the main antagonists in his stories, Morgoth, Sauron etc. were unquestionably evil.

Sorry that was a bit long but happy to discuss more if you need :) ~ Éowyn ☆ talk ~ 18:07, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Something else that's occurred to me since my earlier response: The only races that we can say were actually fully evil were Orcs and Trolls. The implications of having truly evil races was something that bothered Tolkien quite a lot, especially from a theological standpoint, and he kept coming back to which is part of why there are many different possible Origins of Orcs and Trolls#Origins. One letter in particular I'd recommend reading is Letter 153 where he discusses it about halfway through the letter. Having typed this all out I just realized that this is actually not relevant to WWI but I do think it is an important part of how he viewed good and evil.~ Éowyn ☆ talk ~ 21:21, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

That is some great help, thanks! I will look into those sources, they seem extremely useful. Once again, thank you for the insight. :)